Maybe this will be inspiring.Building on the Levi-Strauss I've been reading (very slowly), I decided to take his technique for comparing different versions of the same myth and apply it to a batch of my own story idea summaries. Basically this technique takes two or more story synopses and lays them side-by side to identify what pieces and structure they have in common. The result is something like an equation for a story, which different variables can be plugged into. This has interesting applications for a writer to analyze what is subconsciously important to them, and also applications in story generation, where modularity of story elements is of the utmost importance.
Anyway, the first variable I identified was one which is essential to starting every story, because it is a keystone of creating conflict. This is the Disjunction. A disjunction is something which is wrong. Maybe it has been wrong for a long time, maybe it has been gradually getting worse over the past few years or months, or maybe it has suddenly gone wrong. And this wrongness provides the motivation for the initial incident - a character reacts emotionally to this wrongness and tries to do something about their feelings.
But what are these mysterious disjunctions anyway? Basically, anything which a character feels ought to be one way, but is in reality some other way. And this disphoria, this impression that something is not the way it ought to be, causes the basic character motivations: ambition, fear, loneliness, desire, boredom, disgust, and all those other feeling that make a character want to change something. Specifically disjunctions may be misperceptions (an AI is perceived as a machine and struggles to show people that they are a person), misexpectations (a pacifist is expected to be a soldier), lacks (a person may be unhappy because they lack self-confidence, they may be lonely because they lack a lover, they may be frustrated because they lack permission to pursue their desires), and transformations (a person is placed into an unfamiliar body, job, world, which seems wrong because it is unfamiliar and they don't understand it and can't anticipate how it will behave. Transformations are essentially a lack of information or experience.)
Some example disjunctions:
Adult perceived as Child
Sexual Being perceived as Neuter
Person perceived as Pet Animal
Person perceived as Dangerous Animal
Person perceived as Freak
Non-Dominant perceived as Dominant
Mother perceived as Soldier
Human is transformed into Alien
Human is transformed into Computer
Person is transformed into Different Gender
Lover lacks Beloved
Lover lacks Requitement
Type of Attraction lacks Permission
Natural Follower lacks Leader
Destined Leader lacks Self-Confidence
Closeted Gay lacks Safety to Come Out
Ship lacks Pilot
Barren Person lacks Trigger of Fertility
Young Adult lacks Trigger of Maturity
Person perceives Good Instincts as Bad Instincts
Person wants Closure but rejects both Forgiveness and Revenge
Father lacks Respect from his Family.
Religious Fundamentalist discovers that he now lacks Faith.
